by M. K. Wren
“Conan?” Will hovered near him, frowning at the dark, sodden circle to the left of the collar of Conan’s red plaid Pendleton jacket “You were hit. Figures. Sounded like a damn shooting gallery in here.”
Will’s anxious solicitude roused in Conan only annoyance. He stared at Jerry Tuttle; face down on the floor, right hand loose on the grip of a small semiautomatic that seemed a plaything in his big, callused hand. Near his right foot lay a knife, its long blade reflecting the ceiling light. It looked like a carving knife. It looked like it belonged to the knife set in the kitchen. And it probably did.
Conan was distracted by shouts and footsteps in the hall. He folded his left arm against his body to immobilize the shoulder as he strode to the door, reached it in time to see Mark thumping down the dark hall with Tiff clinging to his arm, Kim hurrying from the master bedroom, while Loanh approached from the other direction, ghostly in a white robe, black hair veiled around her shoulders. Next came Demara, tying the sash of a floor-length, black satin robe, then Lise, racing up the stairs. Mark reached the door first, and when it became obvious that Conan didn’t intend to step aside, Mark stopped abruptly, mouth open in an incongruous O as he peered past him.
“Christ, what happened? Is that Tuttle? Is he dead?”
At that, Tiff threw her arms around Mark’s neck, emitting panting shrieks. Lise demanded, “Conan, are you all right? Where’s Will?”
Will moved up behind Conan, but any reassurance he had to offer was drowned in the cacophony of questions punctuated by Tiff’s continuing shrieks. Conan held up his right hand. “Be quiet! Everyone, just be quiet!”
The cacophony stopped as if he’d turned a spigot, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He said quickly, “I’ll explain what happened later. Right now, I want all of you to go downstairs and wait until—”
“Wait?” Mark objected. “I’m damned if I’m going to wait—”
Will cut in, “Mark, just give me a little time to take care of the casualties. Please.”
That elicited some grumbling, but Mark was apparently ready to accept the request coming from his friend, and he gathered Tiff under his arm and headed for the stairs. “Come on, everybody. Kim, any coffee left?”
Kim regarded Conan coolly, then shook her head. “No, Mark, but I’ll make some.” She started downstairs, and after a moment, Loanh and Demara joined her.
Lise made no move to follow them, and Conan said firmly, “Lise, go downstairs with the others. I want to know if any of them leave the room at any time for any reason.”
She looked past Conan at Will, then nodded and set off down the stairs. Conan closed the door, leaning against it as he looked across the room. Will had turned Tuttle onto his back and was bending over him, seeking a pulse or breath.
Finally Will said, “He’s gone.”
Conan found a cold irony in that euphemism. Gone. Why did doctors, who so often witnessed death, find the word so hard to speak?
“He came in the window?” Will asked. “Didn’t you lock it?”
“Of course I did.” Conan crossed again to the window. “I checked the lock when we got back from the studio.”
But now the entire lock was missing, leaving a pale imprint in the wood and two empty screw holes. He searched the floor and found the lock near the baseboard and a bright, silvery screw a few feet away. He leaned down to pick them up, teeth clenched at the motion that tightened the vise locked on his shoulder. When he straightened, he had to wait for a transient dizziness to pass before he examined his find.
The screw was new, as was its mate, which was still caught in one of the holes in the dark brass of the lock. He took the screw to the window, dropped it into one of the screw holes.
Simple. The original screws had been replaced with these, which were too small for the holes. Raising the sash had dislodged them, sent the lock flying. That’s why there had been a light in this window when he and Will returned from the studio. Someone had been exchanging the original screws for these. And where would that person find these screws and a screwdriver?
In the garage, neatly arranged in the cabinet above the worktable next to the tools. Art Rasmussen was an orderly man.
Conan put the screw and lock on the windowsill. “The lock was sabotaged, Will.”
“Damn, I should’ve stood guard in here.” He blew his cheeks out with an audible sigh and began unzipping Tuttle’s parka.
Conan’s dizziness returned with a wave of shivering as he made his way to the bed and sat down just before his knees gave way. He was wondering if he could keep his supper down. That physical reaction was, he knew, only in part a response to the gunshot wound. He could deal with that, with the pain, the chill lightheadedness.
What he found difficult to deal with was the flaccid corpse of Jerry Tuttle in his camouflage-patterned clothing, eyes half closed, mouth sagging. Conan denied himself the urge to turn away while Will unbuttoned Tuttle’s shirt and revealed three small, red craters, perhaps six inches apart, forming a nearly equilateral triangle in the center of his sunburned, well-muscled chest.
Will sighed again and closed the shirt. “Good shooting.”
Conan’s eyes squeezed shut. Good shooting? It had been nearly point-blank range. How could he have missed?
“Hey, Conan…” The bed shifted as Will sat down beside him. “Damn it, you had no choice. He was shooting at you.”
Conan opened his eyes to stare down at the gun still lying on the floor near Tuttle’s body. “No, Will, he wasn’t shooting at me.”
“What do you mean?” Will demanded. He leaned down and picked up the gun, sniffed at the barrel. “This has been fired.”
Conan winced at Will’s cavalier handling of evidence, but he didn’t comment on it. This crime scene had already been hopelessly contaminated, and at the moment proper crime scene procedure, and even the concept of the Law itself, belonged to a remembered world somewhere beyond this white hole and were quite meaningless here.
“Yes, Will,” Conan said wearily, “I know it was fired. One of the bullets is embedded in the headboard and another in my shoulder. There are two more somewhere in the walls, probably.”
“I’m going to have a look at the one in your shoulder as soon as I get some heat in here. Hell, you might as well be sitting in a refrigerator.” He went to the fireplace and began building a fire on the remaining coals. “What do you mean, Tuttle wasn’t shooting at you?”
“I mean Tuttle came in here with that knife. It’s probably from the kitchen. He didn’t have it with him when he first arrived, nor did he have the gun. Will, I want the bullet out of the headboard for comparison with the one you took out of Heather’s leg.”
“I’ll take care of that later.” He stared into the flames licking at the wood. “You figure that gun belongs to whoever shot Heather?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe they gave it to Tuttle.”
“Then why did he come in here armed with a carving knife?”
“Beats me. Come on over by the fire.” Will watched Conan closely as he walked to the armchair. “Okay, just settle till I scrub up and get my case.” He turned on his heel and hurried out of the room.
Conan settled, taking a moment to remove his gun from his belt and put it on the mantel before he eased himself into the chair. He looked at his watch. 12:10. Monday. A new day.
When Will returned with his medical case, he said briskly, “Before I can look at your shoulder, I’ve got to get rid of a few layers of clothes.”
He put the case on the straight chair and took out a pair of scissors, but Conan objected, “I’m not having you cut up someone else’s clothing. Help me get the right sleeves off, and the rest will be easy.”
That was perhaps optimistic, but together they managed the disrobing—the Pendleton shirt and two wool sweaters—but when Conan was down to a red-stained T-shirt, shivering in spite of the fire, Will resorted to the scissors. He slit the cloth, pulled the shirt out from under Conan’s belt and tossed it into the fi
re, then leaned close to study the wound. Conan craned his neck to peer at it. The bullet had found the hollow below the clavicle perhaps an inch from the attachment of the deltoid.
Will said, “Lean forward a little.” Conan complied, and Will noted, “No exit wound. The bullet got stopped by your scapula.”
“I know.”
“Right. Just sitting there rubbing against the bone every time you move.”
“Something like that.”
Will reached into his case. “You’re depleting my Demerol supply.”
“No!” Conan met Will’s annoyed stare with a faint smile. “The pain is bearable, and tonight comfort isn’t as important as alertness.”
Will considered that, then nodded. “Well, all I can offer you is more ibuprofen. Might as well start now.” He went into the bathroom and returned with the pill bottle and a glass of water. As Conan downed the four tablets he handed him, Will asked, “You say Tuttle didn’t shoot at you? You want to explain that?”
Conan nodded, trying not to flinch while Will cleaned the wound with gauze pads soaked in Betadine that was cold against his bare skin.
“The flashes were too low, Will. And I know someone else was in this room. The shot that hit me came after I…after I shot Tuttle. Someone slipped in through the window behind him. With the gun.”
“Someone? Like who?”
“The person I’ve been calling the lodge accomplice. But now that person can be called a killer.”
“Then it was this accomplice/killer who fired first?”
“Yes. The trouble is, I didn’t register the fact that the flashes were too low and probably came from behind Tuttle before I fired at him.”
“Well, it wasn’t the sort of situation where you ask questions first.” Will sighed disconsolately. “Conan, I’m not equipped to take this bullet out. Hell, you’re just lucky it didn’t hit an inch lower and go into your lung. Or three or four inches south, and it might’ve hit your heart.”
Three strikes, Conan thought, but the killer wasn’t out. In this game, the killer was still at bat.
“At least there’s not much bleeding,” Will said. “But all I can do is clean it up and bandage it. I just hope to hell we can get out of here tomorrow. Today. Whatever. Okay, what I want to know is why that gun was in Tuttle’s hand if he didn’t fire it?”
“Probably the person who did fire it put it there before making a fast exit out the window. I was supposed to be dead, and when you and the others came in, you’d assume Tuttle and I shot each other—and that Tuttle was responsible for the murders at Loblolly Creek.”
Will applied antibiotic ointment, stacked three gauze pads to make a bandage, and centered it over the wound. “Hold this a second.” Then while Conan held the pads in place with his right hand, Will ripped a strip of tape off a roll and began securing the bandage.
Conan stared at Tuttle’s body. “We were set up, Will. Both Tuttle and I. Two birds with one stone: an inconvenient witness and a potentially dangerous accomplice and perfect scapegoat.”
“Yeah. Okay, that’s all I can do for you except a heavy dose of penicillin.” He reached into his case for a bottle of tablets.
Conan swallowed two of them, thinking about how Tuttle and his partner had managed to communicate with each other. They’d had a conference in Tuttle’s room tonight when it seemed everyone else had gone to sleep—the conversation Lise had overheard—but it had been the middle of the afternoon when Tuttle, with gratuitous arrogance, had pointed that imaginary gun at Conan, in effect announcing his intent to kill him. Was it significant that he used the image of a gun? Possibly not. What that gesture told Conan now was that Tuttle had at that time already communicated with the lodge accomplice, and he had been told that Conan was a liability and must be killed.
“Okay, Conan, better get you dressed again, unless you prefer to go around half-naked in this refrigerator.”
“Well, I prefer not to add pneumonia to what ails me.”
The process of getting dressed proved more painful than the dressing of the wound. Will loaned him a clean sweater to go over Conan’s clean T-shirt, but he had no choice but to don a blood-spotted sweater and the Pendleton shirt for the outer layers. Finally, Will removed the case from one of the pillows on the bed, casually slit it all the way down one side and halfway down the other to make a sling.
“How does that feel?” he asked as he tied the loose ends around Conan’s neck. “Too tight?”
“It’s fine, Will.” Conan sank back into the chair again, surprised to find his cigarettes still in the shirt pocket. He lit one, closing his eyes as he inhaled, feeling the edge of tension slacken. “You’d better put the gun and knife in there.”
Will was busy straightening the contents of his medical case. “I don’t have any more bags. I’m not set up for forensics, you know.”
Conan laughed. “Forget the bags. You’ve already handled the gun. If a real forensics technician by an incredible chance ever examines them, he can sort your fingerprints from any others.”
Will stepped around Tuttle to get the gun and knife, brought them back to his case, then closed it with a decisive snap. “So what do we do about him?”
Conan turned to regard the body. Finally he took another drag on his cigarette and said, “Tuttle is the key, Will.”
“He’s also…dead.”
“But none of the people waiting downstairs—no doubt impatiently—know that.”
“Jesus, Conan, what are you up to now?”
“A trap. The only way we’ll ever learn the identity of the lodge accomplice—the killer—is to set a trap.”
“With Tuttle as the bait?”
“Exactly. The killer wanted to silence Tuttle as well as me with that choreographed shoot-out. Tuttle was more of a liability than I am because he knew a great deal more than I do. And if he had survived the shoot-out, he’d be a bit piqued to realize he’d been set up and probably quite willing to spill his guts. And the killer has to be aware that if we ever get out of this white hole, Tuttle might do his gut-spilling to the nearest officer of the law.”
Will put his medical case on the floor and slumped wearily into the straight chair. “You want me to tell everybody he’s still alive?”
“But seriously injured. And it has to be convincing. When they come upstairs, they must be able to look into this room and see Tuttle in that bed tucked in like a proper patient.”
“Then what?”
“Then once everyone settles down to sleep, you and I will lie in ambush here until the killer comes to deliver the coup de grâce.”
“Oh, boy.” Will glared at Tuttle’s body balefully, then he nodded. “Well, I can’t come up with a better plan.”
“We need to make the trap as attractive as possible. You’ll have to establish that Tuttle is in critical condition, and you won’t be surprised if he doesn’t live through the night. That way the killer will think that insuring his demise won’t arouse anyone’s suspicion.”
“Look, I’m not sure I can…” Will’s mouth compressed into a tight line, then he came to his feet. “Okay. I guess the first thing to do is get my patient into bed.”
Will set about his grim task, even agreeing to removing Tuttle’s boots and outer clothing so that they could be hung on the straight chair in clear sight. While Will pulled the bedclothes back, then heaved the body onto the bed, Conan took Tuttle’s clothing to the chair. It was only habit that made him check the pockets of the parka, or perhaps it was some subtle sound, an anomalous shifting.
He reached into the left-hand pocket and found the key ring with the plastic ram medallion. But one of the keys was missing: one of the car keys. He put the key ring in his pants pocket, then checked the right-hand pocket of the parka.
And his hand slipped through into the lining. Frowning, he turned the pocket inside out and saw that the small hole in the badly finished seam had been enlarged forcibly. Zigzags of thread trailed around an opening big enough for a large hand.
He restored the pocket, pushed his own hand through the hole, all the way to the elbow, and finally his fingers closed on a smooth surface and a square corner.
He pulled the object out, sagging into the armchair as he studied-it. A manila envelope, about six by nine, its contents giving it a pillow shape, perhaps an inch thick. It was addressed and stamped for mailing. The address was typed on a blank, paste-on label: SAM CLEMENS, GENERAL DELIVERY, PORTLAND, OREGON 97367. There was no return address.
“Will, does the name Sam Clemens mean anything to you?”
Will smoothed the comforter over Tuttle’s chest and folded the sheet down neatly before he went to Conan’s chair to look over his shoulder at the envelope. “The only Sam Clemens I know of was a writer. Used the pen name Mark Twain. Where’d you find that?”
“It was in the lining of Tuttle’s parka. Stamped but never mailed. There’s no post mark.” He turned it over and felt a satisfying acceleration of his pulse.
A message had been written on the back of the envelope in black ink. Block letters spelled out: HE’S DEAD. FLAGG KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED & WHO YOU ARE. DOESN’T HAVE A GUN. GET RID OF HIM. BURN THIS!
This, then, was Tuttle’s first communication with the killer. Probably it was left in his room while he was downstairs. Certainly it was left at a time when he and the killer had no opportunity to talk to each other, otherwise it wouldn’t have been necessary. It also explained why Tuttle came through Conan’s window tonight with nothing but a carving knife. He thought his intended victim was unarmed. But the killer knew Conan had a gun. Someone had been in this room this morning and carelessly left the light on in the bathroom.
Will commented, “Tuttle didn’t follow orders very well. He didn’t burn the thing. Conan, damn it, what’s inside?”
The flap had been torn open. Conan opened it, whistling under his breath. There were two rubber-banded stacks of one-hundred dollar bills. He counted them. There were two hundred, with Ben Franklin smiling enigmatically from each of them.
“I’ll be damned,” Will whispered reverently when Conan announced the total. “I’ve never even seen twenty-thousand in cash. Makes a neat little bundle, doesn’t it?”